For a lot of Czechs, Pavel Bobek is THE voice of country pop, thanks to his
hugely popular Czech-language versions of hits by U.S. singers like John
Denver and Kris Kristofferson. He is also a trained architect, and was a
close friend of Jan Kaplický, who died in 2009 after a long and fruitless
struggle to have one of his plans realised in Prague. In this, the second
part of a two-part interview, Pavel Bobek speaks about Kaplický and
aspects of his own career. But first he discusses his love of Johnny Cash,
whose songs he recorded on his most recent LP.

“I first heard Johnny Cash when he was starting, it was the deep in the
‘50s. The first time I heard his voice and listened to his songs I
thought, this is something new, something not ordinary, something
extraordinary.

“When Johnny Cash was in Prague for the first time, it was 1978, I met
him, I spoke to him. He was a person who filled me with energy. There was
great energy coming from his voice and from his group, the people on stage
with him.

“And when I met him and shook hands with him I knew he was a very, very
big man. It wasn’t only that he was that big.”

He had a nice kind of revival of his career towards the end, after
some
years where he wasn’t so popular. Were you pleased as a fan to see him
go
through that?

“Yeah, but I think it’s kind of exaggerated. His popularity was always
very high, though of course there were some ups and some downs. I don’t
think he was down much, but of course his career and his life…the first
years especially were very wild. It was not easy to stay at the top, with
journalists and people from the press – there were some scandals...

“I’ve never had scandals. I was not that good, and I was not that wild
as he was!”

Generally speaking, were Czech rock’n’rollers less wild than
their
Western counterparts?

Miki Volek
“Not at all. They were very, very wild. Not me, but my good companions
from the rock’n’roll years, like – maybe some people will still
remember the name Miki Volek. He was a good friend of mine, a very
intelligent guy, a very good guy, but somehow he didn’t manage to be so
popular and to have so many girls…”

And he died young?

“He died very young [at 53]. I was with him almost until he died. He was
not alone – there were many wild rock’n’rollers. I was not that good
that I would be as wild as they were!”

If we could digress for a second – a good friend of yours was the
architect Jan Kaplický, who was your university friend. What kind of
relationship did you have with Kaplický?

“I met him when we started to study at gymnazium [grammar school] when
we were 15. We had the same interests. I remember the first time we spoke
together – he had come from a different school from me.

“We had the same interests. We were interested in music, in technology,
in building aircraft models. I think what I am thankful to him for is that
he taught me somehow to feel beauty – beauty in ordinary things, like
buildings, like cars, like airplanes, like music.

“He taught me that architecture and music have very much in common. They
have melodies, they have height, they have depth, they have rhythm.

“We were very, very close friends, though after the Soviet invasion in
’68 he left. He started to work in Britain. He was very tough, because
his architecture was not easy to sell. But he somehow made it there.

Jan Kaplický
“He wanted to make it here, at home, because he was a patriot. Maybe
I’m the one who knows just how big a patriot Jan was. It was his dream
to
build something in his native Prague. He didn’t manage to.”

This was the famous “Blob”, a National Library building. He
tragically
died two and a half years ago, the same day his baby daughter was born, at
the age of 70. Do you think that the stress of all the disputes about the
library maybe harmed his health?

“Definitely. He was very unhappy. He was strong enough to fight and
fight and fight. But still, it was too much. I'm quite sure.”

If we could get back to your career, you released an album last year
that
was a success: “Víc nehledám” – I’m not looking for anything
more.
It was an album of Johnny Cash songs, recorded in Nashville. Was that the
kind of realisation of a dream for you, to record in the home of country
music?

“It was not a dream, because I never dreamt about something like that.
It was more than a dream. It came like lightning from the sky. I
couldn’t
believe it.

“Then somehow I was in Nashville. I was sitting in a chair and the
people there from the studio told me, last week Kris Kristofferson was
sitting in your chair. So it was not a dream come true. It was
something…it was a marvel.”

In September you’ll be 74 years old. I guess it’s fair to say
you’re
at an age when people often ask you to evaluate your career. Looking back
today, how do you view your career?

“Oh, let’s not speak about career. Somehow I’m thankful for what I
am, for what I have been through, and I still hope I’m not at the end.

“I feel full of energy to continue, but let’s not exaggerate it. One
day the interest of the people, of the audience, will definitely go down.
I
won’t be sitting in a chair shouting, here I am, I still can sing! No! I
think, I hope, I will know when the moment comes that I should
go…off.”